Is Design FINALLY Apple’s priority again?

Описание: When Jony Ive finally left Apple after sitting around seemingly doing nothing for several years, it was a worrying time. Evans Hankey took on the Industrial design chief role, unit early 2023 when the role itself was eliminated, instead the whole design team began reporting in to Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Williams.

This year however Apple looks to be far more focused on design than it has been for quite some time, and the design direction seems to be once again consistent between the hardware and the software, based on the most recent leaks.

Previously we saw Apple’s Aqua design language for software which reflected the coloured plastics and translucent colours of the iconic iMac G3 and iBook. So juicy you could eat them.

Then when Macs got their Aluminium era, so did the software, check out just how gaudy this brushed aluminium iTunes interface looked. It was consistent, if, in retrospect, horrible. They can’t all be winners.

But now, things may be a little more subtle, but I’m here for it. So subtle that I don’t think it’s been mentioned yet. Introducing the iPhone Air - Look at that thing, pretty different looking. And take note as we’ll be coming back to it in a min.

Now setting aside how terrible Apple is at naming things these days, having seen the super slim iPad… Pro redesign, of course, a skinny iPhone would be the Air. Because Air means thin and light, like the AirPods. Wait, no, for them Air means wireless, and pod means music, like iPod. But in iPads, Air means, for some reason, mid-range. Or with MacBooks, it means cheap. And with the iPhone, E means cheap - or economical I guess. So would we get MacBook E sometime, and an iPad E so that things line up again as they should? Will the next Apple Watch SE actually be the Apple Watch 11E? I mean maybe but who knows at this point.

We were talking about cool, consistent design, not terrible names. iOS 19 of course seems to be very design focused from what we’ve seen so far, as Apple’s designers scramble to shave down the edges of the App icons to distract us from the panic in the background where the all the engineers are trying finish the stuff they announced last year like Apple Intelligence and making Siri a little more… lets say useful. Saying less useless seems way less kind. And just as accurate. But if everything has a cool new look this summer, that’s gonna set TikTok on fire.

And that is absolutely not a bad thing. Fresh will be nice, and we sure do still have hangovers from some of the aggressive changes brought by iOS7 when Sir Jony Ive had the total control over both hardware and software. That was of course thanks to Scott Forstall’s Apple Maps accelerated exit. Try saying that 5 times fast, and let me know how you got on in the comments.

These design changes also appeared in Jon Prosser’s iOS 19 camera app leaks from even earlier before, that shows the much more curved elements with softer, more open radiuses, along the lines of what we see in VisionOS, and if you want to see this design language on your own phone, try Apple’s latest apps, Apple Sports and Apple Invites. Both have these rounder, more pill shaped elements for buttons, titles and menus. Now what does that shape remind you of? That’s right, it’s callback time. The new iPhone Air design uses that same shape for its camera capsule. It’s as if the designers have been allowed to finally work together.

And I say finally because in general the software teams and hardware engineers have historically been pretty siloed within Apple, probably as a way of avoiding leaks as everyone only knows the part of the puzzle they’re working on, but of course, from iOS7, our hero Jony Ive was the link between the two sides, and would be able to steer the teams to create complimentary designs without either seeing the other’s work.

After Jony left the company, Evans Hankey lead hardware and Alan Dye was responsible for the software’s visual design direction, which may explain some of the fractures we’ve seen. Now, with the team all reporting to a single point, Jeff Williams, perhaps we’re seeing some more communication between the Aluminium Carpenters and the photoshop kids. We can only hope. Because it’s not just the iPhone Air that’s getting a pretty clear change in the looks department this year, the Pro iPhones will also get the full width bump, giving a more unified feel to the range.

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